They won’t come back.”
“… full of innate sympathy … quickness to perceive good in others … vision of the brotherhood of man …” Scraps of the lecture on St. Francis came floating round the partition wall.
“Don’t let us spoil yours,” he continued to Lucy. “Have you looked at those saints?”
“Yes,” said Lucy. “They are lovely. Do you know which is the tombstone that is praised in Ruskin?”
He did not know, and suggested that they should try to guess it. George, rather to her relief, refused to move, and she and the old man wandered not unpleasantly about Santa Croce, which, though it is like a barn, has harvested many beautiful things inside its walls. There were also beggars to avoid and guides to dodge round the pillars, and an old lady with her dog, and here and there a priest modestly edging to his Mass through the groups of tourists. But Mr. Emerson was only half interested. He watched the lecturer, whose success he believed he had impaired, and then he anxiously watched his son.
“Why will he look at that fresco?” he said uneasily. “I saw nothing in it.”
“I like Giotto,” she replied. “It is so wonderful what they say about his tactile values. Though I like things like the Della Robbia babies better.”
“So you ought. A baby is worth a dozen saints. And my baby’s worth the whole of Paradise, and as far as I can see he lives in Hell.”
Lucy again felt that this did not do.
“In Hell,” he repeated. “He’s unhappy.”
“Oh, dear!” said Lucy.
“How can he be unhappy when he is strong and alive? What more is one to give him? And think how he has been brought up—free from all the superstition and ignorance that lead men to hate one another in the name of God. With such an education as that, I thought he was bound to grow up happy.”
She was no theologian, but she felt that here was a very foolish old man, as well as a very irreligious one. She also felt that her mother might not like her talking to that kind of person, and that Charlotte would object most strongly.
“What are we to do with him?” he asked. “He comes out for his holiday to Italy, and behaves—like that; like the little child who ought to have been playing, and who hurt himself upon the tombstone. Eh? What did you say?”
Lucy had made no suggestion. Suddenly he said:
“Now don’t be stupid over this. I don’t require you to fall in love with my boy, but I do think you might try and understand him. You are nearer his age, and if you let yourself go I am sure you are sensible. You might help me. He has known so few women, and you have the time. You stop here several weeks, I suppose? But let yourself go. You are inclined to get muddled, if I may judge from last night. Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them. By understanding George you may learn to understand yourself. It will be good for both of you.”
To this extraordinary speech Lucy found no answer.
“I only know what it is that’s wrong with him; not why it is.”
“And what is it?” asked Lucy fearfully, expecting some harrowing tale.
“The old trouble; things won’t fit.”
“What things?”
“The things of the universe. It is quite true. They don’t.”
“Oh, Mr. Emerson, whatever do you mean?”
In his ordinary voice, so that she scarcely realized he was quoting poetry, he said:
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